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What Is IR Selects?

IndieReader Selects™ is IndieReader's new review service and distribution program, combining the selling power of the independent bookstore with the vast community of self-published authors. This new program will provide an easy, cost-effective and efficient way for booksellers to stock and sell branded, self-published books and for indie authors to get onto the shelves of indie bookstores.

 

Vanessa Carlisle

I completed my MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College and my work has appeared in both literary and trade magazines including NinthLetter, Boink Magazine, WordRiot, Glossolalia, and others. I co-authored a nonfiction book called I Was My Mother’s Bridesmaid: Young Adults Talk about Thriving in a Blended Family (Wildcat Canyon Press), with my sister Erica Carlisle. I worked in topless and bikini bars for ten years and taught Sex Ed. to 13-15-year-olds for most of that time. My self-published novel, A Crack in Everything, grew from those experiences.
I currently live, write, edit, teach literature, blog on arts and culture at www.gorgeouscurosity.com and do a few sordid things to pay bills in Southern CA. I am working on a PhD in Comparative Literature at UC Riverside, with a focus on texts from the sex industry. I also speak on publishing in the digital/DIY-era at colleges and bookstores, do readings in various dark Hollywood bars, and like to take bad pictures of important events with my iPhone.

Vanessa's Books

Bookseller Cost:
$8.97

A Crack in Everything: A Novel
fiction — Literary Fiction
ISBN: 978-1450243926

Twenty-five-year-old Tamina is a sharp-witted Jersey girl living in Hollywood with a near-phobic response to mismatching colors, an addiction to pedicures, and a hectic job teaching comprehensive sex education to urban youth. Suffering the consequenc …  MORE »

IndieReader Selects™ Review

A Crack in Everything introduces us to Tamina, a sex education counselor with unconventional addictions and a phobia to mismatching colors.

While Tamina is very effective as a sexually transmitted infections adviser to teenagers, her personal affairs are a mess. It was her dream to leave New Jersey, but one soon gets the feeling that Los Angeles might not be the right place for her either. And while one can't help but laugh along with some of Tamina's exploits (she becomes a foot model, a job that allows her to continue to feed her pedicure addiction), it's impossible not to feel compassion for her roommate problems, poverty issues and near break-down episodes.

The story does end on a hopeful note, with Tamina leaving town and deciding, finally, to leave the past where it belongs.